Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday November 01, 2012 @07:42AM
from the prisoner-failed-to-provide-enough-rope dept.

nk497 writes with this selection from PC Pro magazine: "Microsoft's failure to include the EU browser ballot in Windows 7 SP1 cost Mozilla as many as 9 million Firefox downloads, the organisation's head of business affairs revealed. Harvey Anderson said daily downloads of Firefox fell by 63% to a low of 20,000 before the ballot was reinstated, and after the fix, downloads jumped by 150% to 50,000 a day. Over the 18 months the ballot was missing, that adds up to six to nine million downloads — although it's tough to tell if the difference has more to do with Chrome's success or the lack of advertising on Windows systems. The EU is currently investigating the 'glitch,' and Microsoft faces a massive fine for failing to include the screen, which offers download details for different browsers to European Windows users, as part of measures ordered by the EU to balance IE's dominance." Reader Dupple points to coverage at ZDnet, too.

More than anything, I'm surprised this has taken so long to be brought up.

It's a massive irony I installed W7 last week and noticed this. I thought to myself "that's not right....where's my browser choice? Y'know...like M$ were ordered to display..." and it hits the news like the world only just discovered it with me.

[Posted from Firefox installed on a non-European computer, which apparently violates the laws of physics since Firefox usage share is zero outside of Europe since we don't have a "browser ballot" to do our thinking for us here]

Not necessarily Microsoft that had people switching. Fire Firefox's ever growing memory footprint, and frequent update cycle that broke extensions are main reasons people stopped downloading FF.

Wow. What a load of nonsense, Firefox has a tiny footprint stop spreading this lie. As for the frequent update cycle, that may be an enterprise issue, but why would it be for a home user. I stopped looking at extensions breaking a long time ago. I think you would have a hard lime listing one popular addon that is not working under firefox 16.

People have been saying for the past year that FF doesn't gobble memory, but I periodically check FF every month or two and last time I checked, it was gobbling memory and running slowly compared to Chrome. btw, I use no addons except Java.

Must be something about 20-30 tabs and running for 7+ days at a time. Chrome has no issues with this.

Must be something about 20-30 tabs and running for 7+ days at a time. Chrome has no issues with this.My anecdotal experience.

As opposed to benchmarked or at least backed up with an about:memory. Your abnormal usage even if it were true is ridiculous considering how wonderful quit/restart works. Although in my equally useless anecdotal experience firefox runs great with more than that...want me to post a video:)

Why should I have to restart my browser? Isn't that like saying "Win95 is fine, just reboot it every few hours"?

Now that I've talked about FF, I'll have to test it out again in a few days. I like having alternatives and I know FF is getting better. And don't think I'm saying Chrome is better, I'm just saying for how I use my browser, Chrome works best for me right now. FF is a great product.

From FF15 to current FF18, I've not seen any but a few esoteric plugins and extensions break.

WebEx, Sharepoint, that kind of half-arsed plugins can break, most others work nicely (Flash is usually crapping out, nothing new there)Cooliris and Grafxbot are only extensions not working on current FF18, and only one of these even make sense running.

As for memory, then I can observe that after 2 days of having FF open, my mac is slow-as-frozen-shit. Stopping and starting FF resolves that. Might be one of the exte

If it wasn't for wallstreet and the constant need for "growth" quarter after quarter, I wonder how long it would be before Microsoft considers the cost of doing business in the EU to be too high to be worth it.

They were convicted of abusing a monopoly and have to pay for it, but the market is completely different today than it was back then. And as much as it would make some people here happy, is a market with just Apple, Linux and Google best for customers? In world that's quickly becoming a phone/tablet world, Microsoft won't have a majority marketshare for very long, and the barrier for entry is incredibly high for another player to replace them...

If it wasn't for wallstreet and the constant need for "growth" quarter after quarter, I wonder how long it would be before Microsoft considers the cost of doing business in the EU to be too high to be worth it.

They were convicted of abusing a monopoly and have to pay for it, but the market is completely different today than it was back then. And as much as it would make some people here happy, is a market with just Apple, Linux and Google best for customers? In world that's quickly becoming a phone/tablet world, Microsoft won't have a majority marketshare for very long, and the barrier for entry is incredibly high for another player to replace them...

I think you must be a little confused about the importance of the EU, considering the US has only 500 Million compared to EU's 750 million. Its simply a larger market for Microsoft than the US. How arrogant are you?

Microsoft is still the same abusive monopoly it always was. Just because its a massive failure in mobile [apart from the using the elf same abusive practice that got it slapped with the ballot in the first place], and a massive failure on the internet [despite using the self same practices that g

The bottom line is IE is simply not as good as the competition, not even close. Pick your own reasons for its uptick. Personally I think IE should be stripped completely from Windows, and no Apple/Linux bundling a browser is not defence. Personally I would be happy to have browsers removed from them too. The internet is too precious a resource.

There's a Windows store in XP, Vista or 7? Since when? Also, how do I get to the Google Store without a browser on a non-Android device? Also, how is having to go to a vendor app store better than just giving a browser by default? Answer: it's not.

does anyone else think this is sad that Moz is bringing up how many downloads it lost to this "glitch". It's like saying we totally depend on Microsoft to make our browser popular. Otherwise we have no chance against IE or Chrome.

does anyone else think this is sad that Moz is bringing up how many downloads it lost to this "glitch". It's like saying we totally depend on Microsoft to make our browser popular. Otherwise we have no chance against IE or Chrome.

Oh wait...

Not waiting. The idea behind the ballot is simple, create an even footing for the browsers to compete. With all things being even Firefox does better. Lets face it nobody uses IE because its good. Personally I wonder if Microsoft was made to install Firefox as default it would have many downloads of IE;)

Personally I love competition, and would hate to go back to the dark days of IE 10.

does anyone else think this is sad that Moz is bringing up how many downloads it lost to this "glitch". It's like saying we totally depend on Microsoft to make our browser popular. Otherwise we have no chance against IE or Chrome.
Oh wait...

I posted this last time as well, but down in TFA there is a quote saying that in Europe IE downloads also decreased during that time, but Chrome downloads increased. So to me it seems that people are just prefering Chrome these days, and the ballot really makes no difference.

What exactly is Mozilla's point here? Not like they lost any money as their browser is free.

They have exactly lost money on this. They earn money from selling "search engine default to the highest bidder". The less users they have the less negotiating power they have, and that is not all they have lost, in addition mindshare, and brand power. This is especially harmful considering Mozilla is planning new markets.

The RIAA has definitely lost money on piracy. They earn money from "selling CD licenses". The more people that are pirating the less CDs are being bought, and that's not all they have lost, in addition mindshare and brand power. This is especially harmful considering threatening new independent revenue models popping up.

Hmm. Suddenly, the argument with a mere few words replaced is the sort of thing that gets you a troll mod on this site. How is it that when the RIAA claims that "lost sales" due to pira